


These Words Toward You

by sans_patronymic



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Anal Sex, Drunk Sex, Established Relationship, M/M, POV Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes is a Bossy Bottom Marshmallow, Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 06:15:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9587696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sans_patronymic/pseuds/sans_patronymic
Summary: Watson has a habit of waxing lyrical when drunk and Holmes takes advantage of it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Эти слова - о вас](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13655463) by [Little_Unicorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Little_Unicorn/pseuds/Little_Unicorn)



> In the following, Watson quotes many different works and people, often incorrectly and without attribution. Holmes does not mind, and I trust, neither will you, dear reader.

The clock was striking eleven when we entered our twenty-eighth minute of good-byes. It may have been longer than that; I had only begun to take note part way through the incident. We were shrugging on our overcoats, when who should come through the club door, but some distant acquaintance of Watson’s from his University days. And so, we had to say ‘hello’ and ‘what the devil have you been up to’ and ‘good-bye’ all at once. It took twenty-eight minutes.

I am not an overly-genial man, and alcohol and heavy meals only make me less so. Watson often chides me for my brusk tongue, and when I have had the better half of several bottles of Lafite Rothschild, it takes quite a bit of restraint not to blurt that the acquaintance is a banker, has travelled recently to Belgium, and has at least one infant child, simply in the interest of hurrying things along. Thus, I am better off staring at the tall clock in the foyer, trying not to look so remote as to perceived as rude.

This is precisely why I do not often accompany Watson to his club. The man is a magnet for convivial types. Assemble a hundred Londoners in a room, and I wager ten to one that Watson knows at least three of them, and will have befriended the other ninety-seven within the hour. It is little wonder how he manages it: my Watson is a first-rate conversationalist. It is a gift of his to make any man feel he is the sun, that no man has captured Watson’s attention as he does now, in this very moment. Whether one is explaining something as intriguing as the clear-cut soil divisions of SE alleyways, or as insignificant as the inferiority of the Belgian railway system, Watson devotes equal fascination to both.

“Well, it was _aw_ fully grand to see you again, Armstead,” Watson said as we entered the twenty-ninth minute. “I’m afraid we must be off.” 

Armstead oozed enthusiastically in our direction until the thirtieth minute, shaking hands with the rapidity of a snail. It was all I could do not to push Watson through the door and into the street. The air held the distinctive chill of winter, and though wine ran warmly through our veins, we pulled our coats closer out of habit. As we made our way along the walk, Watson’s arm looped through my own and he cozied himself against my side, his brazenness fueled, as they say, by liquid courage. I should like to think we made our way elegantly down the street, but as I had several near-misses with lamp-posts and constables, I am afraid we were staggering.

“Sorry about Armstead,” he began as we fumbled along, “I felt rather duty-bound to hear the fellow out, particularly as he is only just _arriving_ at eleven.”

“Oh yes, duty-bound.”

“Doesn’t speak well of his home life, I should think…”

“Watson, you are the picture of fraternal charity,” grumbled I.

“‘ _Et ipse, notus in fratres animi paterni,’_ as Horace put it _._ ”

“I wouldn’t know,” I confessed. Watson gave my arm a rough squeeze against his ribs.

“Honestly, you ignorant thing. How anyone let you out of school is a marvel.”

“Perhaps they were merely eager to be rid of me.”

At that, he shushed me, a too-loud shush, and I smirked, for I knew my trap had sprung. He halted us at the corner, rose a declarative finger in the air, and proclaimed:

“ _Ignorance is the night of the mind!’_ Johnson warns, ‘ _Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal._ ”

“I suppose you’d best put me in irons, then.”

He shook his head, paying me no mind. Instead, he took me by the shoulders, gave me a good shake and declared, with only a modicum of irony, “ _Education must become a study, otherwise we can hope for nothing from it, and one man whose education has been spoilt will only repeat his own mistakes.”_

“Locke?”

“Kant. I don’t know German, but I’m sure it sounds even more ominous in the original. Would you like to hear from Locke?”

“I would,” said I, starting us again down the path homeward.

 _This_ is precisely why I do, occasionally, accompany Watson to his club. He is endlessly well-read, my Watson, far better than myself, as he is eager to point out. While I have often teased him for his inobservance, he is a veritable sponge for written information; I do not think there is any book which has passed before his eyes that has failed to impart at least some critical passage into the store-house of his mind. There is no circumstance for which he cannot conjure an appropriate allusion or quotation, and when he is intoxicated, he is apt to do so loudly, and with an actor’s flourish. Such performances are among life’s chiefest pleasures.

Yet, Watson is a difficult man to intoxicate. He holds his liquor well, and is indisposed to excess in private. It is only in the amiable environ of the social club, with its ambiance of camaraderie and _bon viv-_ ance, where one might pour two or three or four extra glasses for him before he begins to speculate what is afoot. That night, I had gotten him precisely where I wanted him: silly, spouting philosophy one moment, then Shakespeare the next.

We rounded Portman Square and turned up Baker street, Watson lost in his recitations, myself imagining how best to end the evening. Perhaps a brazen coupling before the sitting room fire, something rough and keen, which paired well with martial axioms or warriors’ epithets. Or would tonight be a night of slow undressing, of love poems and velvet touches? All throughout dinner I had contemplated my options, weighed their relative merits while Watson finished his lamb; now I was half-hard beneath my overcoat considering it again. To say I was eager to be home would be a grave understatement.

Watson was ensconced in some bit of Tennyson as we picked our way up the icy stairs to 221b. He fumbled for his keys, dropped them, and our heads nearly collided as we both stooped to collect them. Inside the foyer, the true extent of my own drunkenness seemed to come upon me all at once. I tried, and failed, to hang up my hat and coat. I stumbled over the runner, and heard Watson sniggering behind my back. I turned, or perhaps more accurately, reeled about, and gave him what I thought to be a very serious glare. 

“May I ask what is so amusing?”

“You are.” Watson grinned with unbearable smugness. His cheeks were flushed with the cold and with drink. He tugged his gloves off slowly, his eyes fixed upon me with an obscene intensity. He was inspecting me. 

“You’re soused,” he decided at last. “You’re _never_ soused.”

“I am that,” I admitted. I took a slow breath, attempting to keep my head from its infernal carousel. “Somewhat accidentally. I don’t relish the feeling.”

“‘ _My friend, who loved above all things precision and concentration of thought, resented anything which distracted his attention from the matter in hand.’_ D’you know who said that?”

I shook my head, leaning against the bannister, more to keep myself upright than to impart an attitude, though I hoped I did both.

"I did," Watson crowed. He smirked at me, fumbling with the buttons of his overcoat. "I wrote that... about you, actually."

The wine was growing heavier. Wine made the lamplight seem softer, ethereal. Watson’s skin seemed to glow, his hair, to glisten. Wine had stained the inner line of his lips. I imagined brushing at it with my thumb, with my tongue, with my—

"Aren't you going to seduce me?" 

"What?" 

I blinked and found myself suddenly sobered. Watson was glaring peremptorily at me, struggling to divest himself of his overcoat and jacket all in one horribly uncoordinated motion.He succeeded at last, leaving a pile of tweed and wool just below the coat rack.

"You only go with me to my club to get me drunk," he continued. "And you only get me drunk when you're planning to seduce me.”

“So, I have been found out.”

“Ra _ther_ , I should say.”

We were standing terribly close by now, so close my lips trembled with the nearness of Watson’s own. His fingers found my tie and busied themselves with its unknotting. I could feel his eyes fix me in their igneous sights; I dared not meet my gaze for fear of losing what little remained of my bravado. Instead, I looked intently at his chin and asked, in as cavalier a manner as I could manage:

“And how is it I seduce you?"

“Well,” he began. 

My tie came off. It was silk, and terribly too expensive to wind up on the entry floor, but as he spoke, Watson’s fingers were beginning to unbutton my collar and I found myself unable to protest.

“Ordinarily, you start by asking me to help you out of your tie. Then, you invent some excuse to invite me into your room.”

“‘ _I have a new collection of etchings I want to show you’_?”

“About as clumsy as that, yes.”

“I don’t sound tremendously beguiling.”

He snorted. “That may be why you get me drunk first.”

I fought a smile and lost. He had undone enough of my shirt that cold fingers could smooth along my collarbone. I caught the lapels of his waistcoat between my thumb and forefinger, distracting myself with the rib of the material. It fit him close and well, measured, no doubt, in leaner times, though I quite liked the effect. As an experiment, I undid one of the silk-covered buttons before following the trail of his watch chain to his waistcoat pocket. That seemed to fit the bill; his thumb pressed quite meaningfully against my throat.

“Now that you mention it,” I said, “I had rather hoped to get your opinion on a manuscript of mine.”

“Oh _had_ you?”

With a deep breath and a squaring of the shoulders, I, at last, raised my head. And what a look was I met with—what devious thoughts seemed to lurk within those eyes of his! It was a look which could bring a maiden’s blush to the cheek of the most salacious Lothario. It could melt icebergs of resolve in an instant.

I mumbled some reply before seizing his hand and, more or less, proceeded to drag him through the sitting room and into my bedchamber. No sooner had the door closed behind us, then I found myself wrapped in an embrace. John’s hands cupped my buttocks, pulling our hips together and making it rather plain that I was not the only one affected by the thoughts lurking behind those beautiful eyes of his. His face pressed into the side of my neck, lips moving against my skin in what were not quite kisses.

“Go sit,” I instructed, managing to pry myself loose. “I still have to find that manuscript.”

John deposited himself onto my bed without complaint and set to undoing his laces. I made a show of rummaging through some papers on my dressing table, on the shelves, discarding an article of clothing at each location: shoes by the tallboy, cuffs on the mantle, waistcoat and bracers on the chair. A silly ritual, perhaps, but one of which I was loathe to dispose. Wine makes me, if possible, even more stubborn.

“It’s in the third drawer,” John interjected at last. I turned about just in time to watch him peel his vest off overhead, leaving him bare-chested and quite splendidly disheveled.

“Ah, quite right.” I opened the third drawer of my bedside table and withdrew the jar of unguent. I returned thus, ‘manuscript’ in hand, to stand before him. “Here it is.”

“Your best work yet,” he teased and grabbed me by the hips.

Here is yet another reason I enjoy this particular scheme; he handles me very differently when intoxicated. In fact, it is safe to say, when sober, he never handles me—touches me, caresses me, even guides me, but never _handles_ me. There is a reticence to his touch, a reverence, as if he is never quite sure where to put his hands. It affords me a certain sort of privilege, I won’t deny, but there is something to be said for being pulled towards the bed, for having my flies undone, and for finding myself suddenly hovering over my diligent supplicant as he takes my cock between his lips. 

My hips hitched as he drank me down. The wine buzzed in my mind and made me unsteady on my feet. It was all I could do to put a hand against the wall, my fingers bumping a picture frame, and as I looked up, I was suddenly confronted by a ghastly visage with sunken eyes and a jutting lip.

“Hold,” said I, and put a hand on John’s shoulder to stop him.

His lips released me instantly and the fingers around my hips tightened in concern. “What’s the matter?”

“I seem to have found myself face-to-face with Charles Peace.”

“Oh?” He leaned back against the wall and glanced up to my rogue’s gallery. He looked back at me, his eyes having lost none of their lasciviousness. “So?”

“It makes it rather difficult to… you know. Concentrate on the task at hand.”

A chuckle rumbled its way out of him. One hand smoothed up and down my thigh, while the other pressed a thumb against the root of my prick.

“I thought that was the whole point of hanging your collection over your bed—a little visual inspiration to fuel your fantasies.”

“Oh do shut up. And lie back against the pillows—I have better plans for you, yet.”

Obediently, John straightened himself out along the bed, resting his arms behind his head and watching me with that incurable smugness of his. His trousers were still on, as was my shirt, and I made quick work of them both, eager to get us down to our skins and to business. I straddled his hips and pressed a kiss—our first of the night—against his lips. All the sweeter for having been overdue.

Fingers folded around the back of my neck, drawing me into further kisses. John took up the two of us into his spare hand, the feel of his firm prick against my own sending a shiver through me. Our kisses were haphazard, our movements, more so. For a time we lost ourselves in the dizzying joy of reunion after a long—too long—evening of propriety. Soon, though, I yearned for more, for closer, for all of him.

“Now where did I put that manuscript..” said I, fumbling through the bedclothes in search of the lost jar. “Aha!”

I took a generous slathering and, catching John’s right hand in mine, proceeded to coat his fingers with a great, ritual seriousness. I glanced at his face and nearly caught the smile he was hiding so well beneath his mustache. He tried on a very befuddled expression and asked, nearly sounding sincere:

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

A decent performance—it earned him a pinch in the ribs. Bracing myself against the headboard, I rose up on my knees and brought his hand between my legs, guiding his fingertips to the very threshold, lest there be any more confusion. He drew his teeth over his bottom lip, and, fixing his eyes upon my face, sunk a finger straight to the second knuckle. I cannot recall my exact reaction, but it was loud enough to merit a shush. I pressed my lips together, converting moans into whimpers as first his finger, then fingers, worked in and out of me.

“' _Lascivam tota possedi nocte puerilem, cuius nequitias vincere nulla potest.'_ ”

“What’s that?” 

“Martial,” he continued, “ _Fessus mille modis illud puerile poposci: ante preces totas primaque verba dedit._ ”

“' _Illud puerile,'_ I at least know what that means.”

 “You would, you pervert.”

“ _Invert_ , thank you.” 

I pressed back against his fingers, reaching once more for my trusty ‘manuscript’. John hissed at the cold jelly against his prick, though I soon found it a warm enough roost. I brought his hand to my cock and instructed him how to frig me, as I shifted myself to improve the rhythm of my hips. How else can I extoll the virtues of that marvelous prick? I delight to have him beneath me, to impale myself upon him. With gravity’s aid, I can feel him sink into the very heart of me. And to combine such a pleasure with that of his touch, of his look, of his words…

“Say something,” I demanded, breath already catching with the efforts of my gyrations.

“What?”

“Something, _anything_ —one of your recitations." 

The rhythm of his hand on my prick faltered. Beneath me, his thighs flexed and relaxed. His hand which gripped my hip did so with such urgency as to leave little doubt regarding the nearness of his crisis. The fault, I suppose, in a long seduction, is that one does not have long to reap the rewards.

“Ah… it’s a bit hard to think…”

“Anything.” 

When he spoke again it was with the practiced cantillations of a schoolboy: “ _Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, the droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote—_ “

“Not that!” conceded I and leaned down to kiss him for his efforts.

He wasted no time in taking advantage of our change in position; the hand on my hips held me fast as his own shifted beneath me. The tops of his thighs came up to rest against the backs of mine, and with a grunt he began to bore into me from below. I pushed his hand from my cock and replaced it with my own, that gave him both to handle as he pleased, to move me in time to his own desires.

I rested my head against his shoulder and listened as he spat sublime profanities into my ear in a haggard whisper. Awful, delicious, monstrous, unprintable things about my arse, my cock, my mouth, every last, vile inch of me and how he reveled in their despoiling. My hand flew along my prick, my hole pulsed, my breath fading into whines which rose and fell with each drive of his hips. All the while, John maintained his lusty rambling. I came thus, to the music of his most wretched poetry: The Devastation of Sherlock Holmes. It was not long before he kissed me soundly and joined me in bliss. 

Now, it seemed, we were little more than a viscous, sweating heap. Our muscles relaxed one by one. I curled myself over him, breathless and still shivering at the last orgasmic waves.

“Get up,” he grumbled, trying to push me aside.

“No.”

“Then let me up.”

I shook my head and wrapped myself around him more resolutely. John sighed a relinquishing sigh. He had been trying to keep me from collapsing onto the sticky mess along his stomach, but I paid him no heed.

“Leave it,” I muttered, burying my nose into his hair. “And let’s have a bath in the morning.” 

“Have it your way, then,” he conceded, one hand trapped beneath my hip, and the other set to smoothing down my back. The hand gave me a squeeze when it reached my arse, before wriggling a finger against my hole. I squirmed and John took the opportunity to roll onto his side with the taunt: 

“ _I’m_ not the one who’ll end up glued shut.”

“Oh, don’t flatter yourself,” said I, settling against his back and once more ensnaring him within my embrace. “You are hardly virile enough to… to ‘glue me shut,’ as you would have it.”

“With ' _flesh as the flesh of an ass, and whose issue is like the issue of horses.'_ ”

A chuckle rose from him, pleased at his own quip. He took the arm I’d draped over his waist and pulled it to his chest. Gently, as though I were made of the most delicate tissue, he brought my hand to his lips and kissed the tip of each finger.

I held John close. Not for the first time, I wished to turn our skins permeable, to melt into him and him into me, down to the bone. Restricted to mortal forms of closeness, I matched our breathing; I rejoiced in every point of contact; with my chest against his back, I felt the muffled rhythm of his heartbeat. I placed my lips against his neck and whispered a divine phrase. 

There was a voiceless snicker which shook both our bodies. A hand which was not mine gave my cheek a clumsy pat. John hummed in amusement. 

“You’re more jiggered than I thought.”

“How do you mean?”

“I never hear you say _that_.”

I scoffed. “I do. You know I do.”

“Knowing it and hearing it are two different things.”

The words sunk into me. To know and to hear—the pleasure of feeling sentiment made melody to drip divinely into one’s ear. How it permeated the soul! How very much I should like to be treated to his recitations more often and not always at the bottom of a bottle. I supposed that made two of us. I resolved then and there to tell him everyday.

“I love you,” I repeated and let the warmth of wine-soaked sleep carry us away.


End file.
